http://youtu.be/XaN1Gprxe94 Fasten your harness, slide back into the seat-rest, and get the meat ready for the vulture.
We’re floating half a mile above Phewa Lake, in central Nepal. It feels like a lawnchair catapulted into space: there’s a pilot right behind me, but up front, only thin air. Looming on the horizon is a breathtaking string of Himalayan snowcaps; below is a tapestry of farm terracing, carved out of mountainsides. And far, far below, the shimmering lake.
Out of the blue, Bob shows up. Bob is an elegant flier, trained to land on your gloved fist to pick up morsels of buffalo meat. He’s an Egyptian Vulture—quite handsome compared to other vulture species as he is not bald—instead sporting white head feathers. Hand-reared from birth, Bob has been imprinted on humans, but his aerial instincts are all natural. He can find thermals in a flash—a skill that birds have honed over millennia to conserve energy by using updrafts. Thermals are the Holy Grail for paragliding pilots, who depend on these air currents to extend their flight time.
Bob’s eyesight is probably 15 times sharper than human vision. Right now, he is rocketing between two paragliders, using his razor-sharp vision to chase his breakfast. There are two tandem paragliders. My pilot, Elly, blows a whistle to signal for Bob to glide onto my gloved hand for a meaty reward. Piloting the second tandem is Scott Mason, who pioneered this zany form of paragliding, known as “parahawking.”
